Mader Levap
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Trump spending rest of his pathetic life in jail is enough for me.
Split Thread A second impeachment
- Thread starter JoeMorgue
- Start date
Trump spending rest of his pathetic life in jail is enough for me.
BobTheCoward
Banned
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If you don't use the legal standard for guilt, and leave it up to each legislator, I'm not sure you have an argument against them when they use that standard,or a more strict one, and vote against.
dasmiller
Just the right amount of cowbell
I am deeply conflicted about the death penalty in general, but I think I would end it, so I don't wish to see Trump or anyone else (I'm gnashing my teeth a bit right now) executed.
I think he should be imprisoned for a very long time, and for a whole stack of offenses. I want his supporters to understand who he really was, so I'd like to see convictions for sedition (of course), influence peddling, tax evasion, money laundering, false statements under oath, obstruction of justice, etc etc.
I want fair trials for all of it; he shouldn't be convicted of anything that we can't prove he did. But I believe he did a lot of illegal stuff, and he should go down for all of it.
ETA: re "I want his supporters to understand who he really was," - this isn't a reverse "own the libs." I have some friends who vigorously support Trump; I want this to be a teachable moment for them. I want them to understand how they were misled, and for them to be more wary of demagogues in the future.
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Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
Well, it's consistently worked for them for years so far. It even got them the Unity President they chose for us. They've been given no reason to stop trying it yet.Republicans... almost in unison, blame the Democrats because "what the US needs now is unity."
When it's not even subtleties but perfectly plain & simple, it's not autism/Asperger's. It's just a pretentious schtick of "somebody please help me English, I just can't English, what am words" that some people occasionally get into on certain subjects. (And then if nobody feels like indulging the pretense, the next claim is that that's because they/we "can't".) It just pops up rather randomly; I've never spotted a pattern to predict when who would go into this mode over what.
The quotes about Biden's alleged illegitimacy and the country about to be destroyed if Biden wins are right there in black & white. The orders for the whole crowd to go to the place where Biden is in the process of stealing it right now are right there in black & white. The orders to fight are right there in black & white. There's nothing missing that needs to be figured out & inferred, so there's no possibility of reading it and being unable to solve the hidden mystery.
Yesterday I read that everybody who's normally supposed to follow the President's orders and hasn't already resigned has quit following his (although it wasn't specified what orders he's given that weren't followed). That's a de-facto "25th Amendment" with avoidance of making it official.
It reminds me of managers at my current work place and some past work places trying to deal with bad employees without ever documenting anything or getting HR involved. I don't get the urge to hide things like this instead of openly admitting that you must do what you must do, but it seems to be a fairly common urge.
...which has actually been part of their idea of what the Second Amendment was about all along. This was just the first time we've seen a serious attempt to apply it instead of just saying it in gun debates.
Meadmaker
Unregistered
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I don't know if he wanted them to storm the Capitol. I seriously doubt that he wanted them to smash windows to get in. On the other hand, I know that when I heard him say those words, I feared that they would storm the Capitol. I was not at all surprised when it happened, because I could infer that as a likely outcome of what he said.
If he made the same inference, and knew it was likely, that's enough. I don't know how to go about proving he knew that. He might be so incompetent and self-absorbed that it never occurred to him to consider the impact of his words on the crowd. They were cheering for him, and that's what matters to him. I think the only way that a legal case could be made is if he made a comment to one of his advisors along the lines of "That crowd is really angry. Pence better send this back to the states or they might end up storming the Capitol." I think that would meet the legal bar, but I doubt if it actually happened.
But is it enough for impeachment? is that a low bar? I don't think so. I think the election results are clear and he is trying to get them overturned in an extra-legal process. I think that's a pretty high bar, and he has cleared it easily. I think he should be removed from office.
However, it seems extraordinarily likely that he won't be removed, except through the normal means of Biden being sworn in next week. I think the Senate show trial after he is out of office seems pretty dumb. These folks must think pretty highly of themselves if they think the most important thing is that they stand up and make speeches and force someone to vote yes or no on a question that has no legal effect.
alfaniner
Penultimate Amazing
I can't find a picture but I've seen it on the video -- there was at least one guy wearing a "Rebels" t-shirt that was a take-off on the Star Wars rebels logo. (No, it wasn't a Star Wars shirt.)
turingtest
Mistral, mistral wind...
To me, for purposes of impeachment, it doesn't even really matter that he didn't say the exact words "march down there and storm the place and string them up, " or anything similar. He wasn't speaking to people, he was speaking to a mob, one that had already been primed with his claims of "stolen election, you were robbed!" It comes down to what any reasonable person should have expected the effect of his words to be- it didn't even have to be purposeful incitement, based on intent, only one that was reasonably foreseeable as an effect. And the idea that Trump should escape impeachment as a punishment because he's just not reasonable enough (or too damn stupid) to have known the effect his words would have is ridiculous, especially after four years of seeing him in office and using that exact same sort of speech as policy at one rally after another. He should have known how his words would work on his faithful- he got into office in the first place by knowing the difference between just people and a mob of them.
slyjoe
Illuminator
The House just introduced HR21 - a bill to ask Pence to invoke the 25th amendment. They aren't doing anything else today. I'm surprised they would actually bother.
I wouldn't be so sure.
I know that conventional wisdom is that, but there are a lot of Senators who will see how unpopular the attempted lynching of not only Nancy Pelosi, but also Trump's VP.
It might actually be rather brave of them to side with Trump. Especially if opinion polls show his popularity nosediving, which it might.
The Great Zaganza
Maledictorian
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McConnell decided that the Senate didn't need to gather evidence to decide the case of the 2st Impeachment.
If he wanted he could have the Senate just vote.
slyjoe
Illuminator
Well, they also introduced a resolution to impeach the president. No big deal.
Really? I didn't think they had yet.
"(CNN) House Democrats formally introduced their resolution to impeach President Donald Trump on Monday, charging him with 'incitement of insurrection' for his role in last week's riots at the US Capitol."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/house-democrats-impeachment-plans/index.html
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slyjoe
Illuminator
Thanks. I get it now.
I was watching the house feed when the 25th amendment bill was introduced. Immediately after that they gaveled the house into recess until tomorrow at 9 AM.
I see from the CNN article there was a brief pro forma session after that.
The Atheist
The Grammar Tyrant
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I'm not playing devil's advocate - I genuinely think it's a dumb move.
And I'm not the only one - here's a lifelong hard-left columnist from The Guardian saying the exact same thing, for the exact same reasons:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/11/democrats-impeach-donald-trump-exile-base
There you go - you nailed it on both counts.
Trump is an extraordinarily stupid and self-absorbed person. The idea of cause and effect is beyond his brain, and he was just playing the same game he's been playing since "Lock her up!" chants started. "Hey, they're cheering while I'm talking, I'll keep talking!"
As I keep saying, and as the Guardian bloke says, you can rise above it or sink down to his level and Democrats have chosen the latter.
Yeah they aren't impeaching him. They are planning to. Hell they aren't planning to. They are announcing their plans to maybe announce their plans maybe.
The Democrats treat impeachment like it's they are starting up a Jumbo Jet. Watching Democrats do anything is like watching Jabba prove immortality. You never get out of the planning stage.
"Today House Democrats announced plans to form a committee to schedule a press conference to announce their plans to set a firm date to release their report on the possibility of making announcing their plans to announce place to announce plans to announce plans of maybe one day announcing plans of starting the first step in the process of announcing their plan to impeach Donald Trump."
"Announcing your plans" is political ass-covering speak for "Do nothing hoping someone else will make the first move."
The Democrats treat impeachment like it's they are starting up a Jumbo Jet. Watching Democrats do anything is like watching Jabba prove immortality. You never get out of the planning stage.
"Today House Democrats announced plans to form a committee to schedule a press conference to announce their plans to set a firm date to release their report on the possibility of making announcing their plans to announce place to announce plans to announce plans of maybe one day announcing plans of starting the first step in the process of announcing their plan to impeach Donald Trump."
"Announcing your plans" is political ass-covering speak for "Do nothing hoping someone else will make the first move."
Meadmaker
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Some years ago I was a contractor working for General Motors on a very large program. In the list of monthly accomplishments on the program, one of them was that a schedule had been decided to form a team to put together a plan to get some task done.
I was trying to explain to my colleagues how this demonstrated that the program was in serious trouble and unlikely to meet its rather ambitious goals. My boss chastised me for my negative attitude.
I think the Democrats are in the process of preparing a symbolic gesture, but they'll have to have some meetings first to figure out how to do it.
Well, whatever. Hopefully it won't distract from governing.
I am confused. CNN says the impeachment resolution was introduced. I listened to the entire pro-forma session of the House of Representatives, and did not hear it. The session started, the Sergeant-at-Arms resigned, there were a few committee assignment motions, then the motion to ask Pence to invoke the 25th, then they adjourned. Where the hell is CNN getting the idea they introduced an impeachment resolution too? Was it just introduced on paper and not brought up during this session?